A faster grocery getter - 04 WRX Wagon

[councilc]

keep up the great work, nothing but love for your wagon!

[zedsdead]

I love what you're doing man and I'll be watching closely. I have been wanting to tidy the bay up a little in mine but there really isn't too many doing it with these cars. Well, if there is I'm not finding them.

Good luck brother!

[Recoil889]

Just checking in for those of you who have been following.

I've spent the last couple weeks messing around with stuff here and there. I focused on cleaning up my work space and re-organizing my tools again. I find that I work a lot better in a clean and organized environment.

I sat down with a buddy of mine and came up with a game plan for moving the harness and extending out the fusebox and ABS module wiring. I've got to run down to harborfreight at some point this week and pick up some wire loom, shrink wrap, and another cheap soldering iron. The plan is to extend out the fusebox wiring on the main harness side, and run it through a pass through hole in the firebox which is below the brake booster. Because the dash is out, we should be able to route it through and secure it to the support beam that the dash bolts up to.

The pistons are out of my brakes, too. I need to commit some time with a red scotch bright and knock off the rust and gunk that's on them. Rebuild kits for the brakes are on the way, too. The pads are still good, so those will stay. Stoptech stainless lines will be ordered some point after they get back from powdercoat.

I'm getting to the point where stuff is starting to slow down. I'm going to make myself get into the garage sometime this week and get a rag with some brake-clean and get rid of some of the nastiness that's sitting on my block/tranny. I'm also going to try and remove the rest ABS hardline that's in the bay and start coming up with some rough measurements for what I'll need to replace it. Does anyone know where I can get Japanese ABS hardline (i forget the code for it) in sections greater than ~6 ft? Local parts places don't have any length longer than that, and I'd rather not have to join short sections together.

Photos to follow later this week/weekend.

[Recoil889]

The gauges, power steering tank and new dipstick all showed up today. Joy.

In reading about mounting options for the gauges (I can't stand when I see the interior of someones car and it looks like a goddamned space ship) I stumbled across this:

http://www.rexnet.com.au/forum/index.php?%2Ftopic%2F116415-diy-01-07-wrx-custom-clock-gauge-pod%2F

Looks pretty clean, and not too hard to do. As much as I **** to blatantly copy someone else's cool shit, I think it's the cleanest option I've seen. That said, I went down to home depot and picked up some PVC pipe. I've got a spare clock pod already, so I'll probably get into cutting that up this weekend.

[Recoil889]

Nice build and write up. I love seeing Subaru guys doing different stuff, especially tucking and shaving the bay. Keep up the good work and if you have any questions i've been down that road in the subie bay lol.

Thanks. I very well might get in touch. I'm starting to run out of ideas already!

loving the progress. what are you doing in school?

Thanks, man. I'm studying Urban Planning/Development.

Love that STI wagon, good work so far, keep it up man

Thanks! I'm sure you know it's not really an STI. Just STI front end swapped over. She still has the 2.0L and 5sp.

[Dome]

Love that STI wagon, good work so far, keep it up man

[dubs&boost]

loving the progress. what are you doing in school?

[Johnsea]

Nice build and write up. I love seeing Subaru guys doing different stuff, especially tucking and shaving the bay. Keep up the good work and if you have any questions i've been down that road in the subie bay lol.

[Recoil889]

I've got a little bit of an update here for you guys.

I picked up some new parts over the past few days:

- A spare set of timing belt covers that I'll paint match to the color of the car. Should create the illusion that my engine bay itself is bigger and that the motor is smaller. Hopefully.
- Weapon-R power steering tank. I'm not deleting power steering because fuck that. This should look nicer in the engine bay than the dirty "clear" bottle that's in there now.
- Defi 52mm red racer boost and EGT gauges. I still need to track down an oil pressure gauge and that'll do it.

Otherwise, not much. I decided against powder coating the alternator shroud I have and decided to powdercoat the alternator cage itself. I also hacked up the alternator support bracket, flipped the alternator upside-down and over to the driver's side. I think this'll create some more visual balance from a left to right perspective. Here is is mocked up.



I still need to file down the areas I cut off and smooth it out nicely before it goes off to powdercoat. There is a mess of vacuum line that sits on top of the block (under the intake manifold) that I need to sort out. They're necessary, so I can't just delete them. I've started to bunch some together nicely with black zip ties so they're not just piled all over the place.

Started school again today. Homework is lame, I'd rather be working on my car. Oh well.

[FunfGang]

Looking good! Keep the updates coming.

[Recoil889]

Got a little bit done over the past two days. The first thing that I did was label the brake lines coming off the ABS module, and then disconnect them. I didn't even think of using a flare wrench to do it, so unfortunately, I stripped out one of the fittings on the proportioning valve.


After I had the lines disconnected, I removed the module off the harness the same way I did with the fuse box.



I also was able to delete the cruise control, and start moving the part of the wiring harness that was on the firewall. It sits on the outside of the wiper cowl. What I think I'm going to do is drill one hole in the wiper cowl, feed the harness in, and run it in the cowl. Should clean it up a bit. Because I'm not doing a full shave/tuck, I'm really not too worried about making one small hole. I think the benefit of moving the harness out of sight should make up for it.



I did some rough mocking up of a fender tub to help me make my decision on whether or not to tub it. I looked at some other Subarus with tubs and got a point of reference, and did some guestimation on the best size for them. I came up with something like this:









I think I'm really leaning towards just tubbing it. I'm already starting to rub in my fender wells at 18x9.5+39 with 0 camber in the front. I could heat up the fender well and massage them out, but I think that's taking the easy way out. I can justify not fully tucking the harness or shaving the bay because I know it's only a matter of time before I do a built EJ257 with a rotated set up and 6 speed.

Lot's of people I've talked to have said that it's just tons of work/money to tub it. I guess I just don't see it; Make a few cuts, pop out the arches, weld in new sheet metal, smooth out and paint. Maybe I'm missing something?

Here is the state of the interior of the passenger fender as it sits.



I start school again next week, so updates are probably going to slow down a little.

[Recoil889]

very nice work man, love your car.
im also a fan of your attitude

Thanks! I'm trying to have fun with this build. Not always easy,but I'm trying!

[dirtmcgirt]

very nice work man, love your car.
im also a fan of your attitude

[Recoil889]

Got some more work done today!

I decided to focus on the driver's side and clean up as much as I could. I started by marking all the brackets that I wanted to delete with an "x." I then took a sharp punch, and put a good dent into the center of the spot welds so that my drill bit would have something to bite into. Then I drilled it out a little with a regular titanium bit, followed by a spot weld drill bit, and knocked the brackets off with a chisel/hammer.



I also decided to tackle moving the fuse box from the wiring harness.



I split the box open, and unplugged what had connectors on the back, and brought those outside the fender and hung them down along side the hub. For the stuff that wasn't on a connector and part of the actual harness, I cut away the shrink wrap holding it all together, and untwisted it as best as I could. I then took little wire labling tags, and labeled each wire individually.



After I had two of the same numbers on a wire, I cut in the middle of the two numbers and zip tied the loose ends on either side.



Here is the driver's side after today's work:



I was also able to find this in line fuel filer made by Red Horse Performance at my local auto parts store. It's already got -6 AN fittings on either end, which is perfect, as the rest of my fuel system is all -6. It is MUCH smaller than the stock fuel filter and should be pretty easy to mount inconspicuously.



I also took a few minutes and reversed the position of the stock horn, and stock alarm speaker so that they're not visible from the outside of the engine bay. Here is a shot of them from where the headlight is. Nothing major, but I think it cleans it up just a little bit more.



Happy New Years.

[Recoil889]

I tried, but I couldn't sit still today and I was able to get some work done on the wagon.
Out of curiosity, I decided to see what was in the wiper cowl. Fortunately, the only thing in there is the wiper motor. Otherwise, it's a big long covered space which looks great for hiding "stuff". The measurements of it are about:
5 1/4" deep at the deepest
5" wide at the widest
52" long



This should be plenty of room for me to hide hard lines and be able to keep the ABS.
Other than that, I took the front fenders and headlights to make it a little easier to lean up against the car and into the engine bay.







I also took some rough measurements of the ABS module and Fuse box. The ABS module is about:
3 1/2" wide
5 1/2" tall
7" long
I'm thinking that I should be able to put it underneath where it is right now (upside-down.) As long as the orientation of the module doesn't matter, I should be able to fit it upside-down behind the bumper and out of the way of the fender well. Then I'll have to have hard lines made, routed in a group along the inside of the body and up into the cowl next to the strut tower. In theory, this sounds reasonable, but I have no idea in practice how it'll work out. I can't really think of any complications besides air in the ABS? If any of you know anything I don't about this, please speak up.

The fuse box measured at about:
3 1/2" wide
4 1/2" tall
7 1/2" long
That should be able to fit in my glove box and leave a little bit of room for something else small in there. I'm hoping to be able to use the hole in the fire wall that the A/C used to be in to extend out and route the harness.

Other than that stuff, I took a few minutes and switched out the E brake for the 05 STI one. This E brake sits closer to the driver's seat and matches the hole in the center console I'm swapping in.